The mother died on a Saturday afternoon, having had lunch. The next day, after doing the paperwork, the two sisters went home, because the vigil room didn’t open until Monday. They had to choose a song to say goodbye to and decided it would be Carlos Gardel’s version of the tango Adiós muchachos. A few hours before he died, they had put it on his mobile phone. The older sister explains it with an expressive gesture, as if she were the mother, resting her head on the pillow and opening one eye when she heard the music. But the next day, at the funeral home, they have a shadow of doubt. When their beloved brother, who was a free jazz musician, died, they chose one of his themes and a selection of songs that he liked and that they also liked, which they had shared. But a mother always has a bottom of mystery. The children were amused by this obsession with the gallant, who died in a plane crash in Medellín so long ago – in the year thirty-five – that most of those who had lived through his death and mourned him no longer they are on earth The tango by Julio César Sanders (music) and César Vedani (lyrics) has a cheerful melody that does not connect much with the text: it is a man who is ill, retires from life and says goodbye to his companions. He remembers his mother and a girlfriend he had – both of them, renoi, dead –: they look like Folch i Torres’ Live Pages.
The two sisters explain it to the people who will join them in the vigil on Monday afternoon, as if they were looking for the complicity and acceptance of their neighbors and friends. I never have them all with tangos. Once in Buenos Aires, a tango singer explained to me what the lyrics of A media luz, another of Gardel’s greatest hits, meant. That stanza he makes: “Juncal doce veinticuatro / Telefonea sin temor / De tarde, té con masitas / De noche, tango y champán / Los domingos, té danzante / Los lunes desolación”. It was a hat shop that closed on Mondays.
It was a short ceremony. It started with a piece of Mahler and a reading from the Gospel according to Saint Paul. They asked me to say a few words but I declined the offer. After sprinkling the holy water over the box, Adiós muchachos was played over the megaphone: Carlos Gardel’s version, accompanied by guitars. The older sister’s partner put his arm around her neck, the older sister took the younger sister by the arm. When leaving the oratory, a neighbor remembered her mother, years ago, when they went on a trip and she sang it in the car. Some of us who attended the funeral looked at the cell phones to find out the date of the recording: 1927. Our friend was six years old when it came out. She heard it on the radio, as a child, and when she was young, at the dance. He heard her married, in that car that the neighbor remembered, and in old age, when she missed her husband. Gardel will never go away, there will always be Argentine restaurants in love with tango. But the experience of a lifetime with this song went down with our friend, and that day Carlos Gardel also died a little.
